IN A dazzling twist that no playwright could鈥檝e scripted better, the once-mighty Awami League 鈥� yes, the very party that lorded over Bangladesh for 15 and a half uninterrupted years 鈥� has now declared its own fall as the result of a grand, globe-spanning conspiracy. Naturally. Because when authoritarianism topples under the weight of its own hubris, what else could...
IN MANY educational systems today, well-meaning efforts to ensure teacher accountability have become narrowly preoccupied with measurable indicators 鈥� attendance, lesson delivery, syllabus coverage. While structure and discipline have their place, such emphasis on compliance risks diverting attention from the real objective: student learning. A teacher might adhere...
THERE are no permanent friends, only permanent interests, in geopolitics. And today, those interests have forced India to make the most consequential choice in decades: to bow before Beijing鈥檚 economic and strategic dominance, and to distance itself from an increasingly hostile Washington. What began as a cautious re-balancing in late 2024 has now hardened into...
THIS is concerning and a disservice to the spirit of the July uprising that a section of police personnel is still involved in criminal and corrupt activities. The involvement of police personnel in crimes such as extortion, bribery, intimidation and framing innocent people in false cases has continued to make the headlines every other day. The agency is also reported to have taken...
THE number of cases pending with the courts has reached a little more than 4.33 million as of March. Subordinate courts have about 3.69 million cases pending, the High Court Division of the Supreme Court 599,000 cases pending and the Appellate Division 34,926 cases, as 抖阴精品 reported on August 10. There were about 4.05 million cases, keeping to Supreme Court...
COUNTERFACTUALS 鈥� what if so and so had happened? 鈥� are always dicey. For example; would there have been a full-scale Vietnam war if President John F Kennedy had not been assassinated? There is no way to prove that hypothesis right or wrong. In the case of today鈥檚 Middle East, one could pose the counterfactual question about a forgotten 1919 report about...
IN HIS seminal work Parties and Party Systems, political theorist Giovanni Sartori astutely observed that electoral systems are far from neutral tools. They do more than count votes; they shape outcomes, entrench hierarchies, and define the political playing field. Nowhere is this truer than in Bangladesh, where the first-past-the-post system has entrenched duopolistic...
IMAGINE a world in which the US dollar, already the lifeblood of global finance, transforms into a digital juggernaut 鈥� flowing through blockchain rails to tighten America鈥檚 grip on global capital. This isn鈥檛 speculative fiction. It鈥檚 the emerging reality, and its name is stablecoins...
SINCE independence in 1971, Bangladesh has gone through several political transitions, many of which involved interim or caretaker governments. During these times, significant institutional reforms have often been introduced that tend to last beyond their immediate terms. The current government, now responsible for leading the country through a critical...
PRICES of onions, eggs of farm chickens and vegetables registered a fresh increase on the kitchen market in Dhaka in the past week. Prices of onions registered the highest increase of Tk 20 a kilogram, that too, in a couple of days. Onions on August 8 sold for Tk 80鈥�85 a kilogram, up from Tk 60鈥�65. The prices, however, ranged between Tk 65 and Tk 70 on the wholesale market...
THIS is worrying that there is no oversight on the recruitment of foreigners in English-medium schools. A report that 抖阴精品 published on August 9 says a majority of teachers in leadership roles in English-medium schools are Indians and the education ministry has no information on the matter. Renowned and relatively expensive private-sector English-medium...
AMERICAN exceptionalism has for long attracted both admiration and strategic exploitation. With its vast economy, unmatched military reach and liberal democratic ideals, the United States remains the gravitational centre of the global order. Yet many...
A WISE old man once lived in the hills alongside a clever young boy. Eager to prove the old man a fool, the boy devised a cunning trick. He caught a small, delicate bird in the forest and held it gently in his hands. His plan was straightforward: he would...
AS BANGLADESH prepares for a political transition and the interim government initiates the much-anticipated consensus commission on state reforms, one cannot help but notice a troubling trend: the overwhelming focus on constitutional, electoral and...
PLASTIC was originally developed for the benefit of humanity. Because of its low production cost, mouldability, light weight and durability, products such as polythene bags and sachets quickly became popular across the world. Multinational...